Tweaking My First Impression

My reviews follow a pattern: thoughts on plot, characters, writing, themes and personal enjoyment. Then a rating out of 10 at the end. (You’ll hear more about this tomorrow.)

Oh, and one other rule: NO SPOILERS. (With exceptions when spoilers are necessary for criticism.)

While these five categories are equally important on the grand scheme of things, I usually focus on character development, because in storytelling characters are the most important thing to me. Plus, it’s easy to talk about characters without spoiling anything.

Because I avoid spoilers, plot critique is usually rather general: was it smooth, was it interesting, did the conflict make sense, and was it resolved reasonably?

I usually write my reviews either on the day of or a few days after finishing a book. My first impressions of a book are usually pretty solid.

(Again, with a few exceptions. I’ve got a few books to review that I finished in October.)

The thing is, I don’t publish reviews right away, I mentioned this in my blogflow post. I usually give them a week, during which I will re-evalute my thoughts. If any of my first impressions change, so does the review.

The only time this was a serious problem was when I reviewed Blood of Olympus a while back, which I made drastic changes to as the week progressed.

Usually big changes occur while I’m flipping through the book and I find something that drastically changes my mind, often for the better. I actually had to re-read Eleanor and Park before finally publishing the review because I was really conflicted.

…and that’s my review process.

Any advice for me to revamp my review process? Let me know in the comments!